If I turn my head, another story; and everything is
carried to my husband to make mischief. It is nothing but lies,
lies, lies, all day, all night, all year. Women don't do that way
in your country, do they?"
"No," I replied emphatically. "If any woman in my country were
to tell a lie to make another woman unhappy, she would be thought
very, very wicked."
"I am sure of it," she said. "I wish I could go to your country
and be at rest." She turned to her work and began talking to the
others in Chipewyan.
Now another woman entered. She was dressed in semi-white style,
and looked, not on the ground, as does an Indian woman, on seeing
a strange man, but straight at me.
"Bon jour, madame," I said.
"I speak Ingliss," she replied with emphasis.
"Indeed! And what is your name?"
"I am Madame X - - - -."
And now I knew I was in the presence of the stuckup social queen.
After some conversation she said: "I have some things at home you
like to see."
"Where is your lodge?" I asked.
"Lodge," she replied indignantly; "I have no lodge. I know ze Indian
way. I know ze half-breed way. I know ze white man's way. I go ze
white man's way. I live in a house - and my door is painted blue."
I went to her house, a 10 by 12 log cabin; but the door certainly
was painted blue, a gorgeous sky blue, the only touch of paint in
sight. Inside was all one room, with a mud fireplace at one end
and some piles of rags in the corners for beds, a table, a chair,
and some pots. On the walls snow-shoes, fishing-lines, dried fish
in smellable bunches, a portrait of the Okapi from Outing, and a
musical clock that played with painful persistence the first three
bars of "God Save the King." Everywhere else were rags, mud, and
dirt. "You see, I am joost like a white woman," said the swarthy
queen. "I wear boots (she drew her bare brown feet and legs under
her) and corsets. Zey are la," and she pointed to the wall, where,
in very truth, tied up with a bundle of dried fish, were the articles
in question. Not simply boots and corsets, but high-heeled Louis
Quinze slippers and French corsets. I learned afterward how they
were worn. When she went shopping to the H. B. Co. store she had
to cross the "parade" ground, the great open space; she crowded her
brown broad feet into the slippers, then taking a final good long
breath she strapped on the fearfully tight corsets outside of all.
Now she hobbled painfully across the open, proudly conscious that
the eyes of the world were upon her. Once in the store she would
unhook the corsets and breathe comfortably till the agonized
triumphant return parade was in order.
This, however, is aside; we are still in the home of the queen. She
continued to adduce new evidences. "I am just like a white woman.
I call my daughter darrr-leeng." Then turning to a fat, black-looking
squaw by the fire, she said: "Darrr-leeng, go fetch a pail of
vaw-taire."
But darling, if familiar with that form of address, must have been
slumbering, for she never turned or moved a hair's-breadth or gave
a symptom of intelligence. Now, at length it transpired that the
social leader wished to see me professionally.
"It is ze nairves," she explained. "Zere is too much going on in
this village. I am fatigue, very tired. I wish I could go away to
some quiet place for a long rest."
It was difficult to think of a place, short of the silent tomb,
that would be obviously quieter than Fort Smith. So I looked wise,
worked on her faith with a pill, assured her that she would soon
feel much better, and closed the blue door behind me.
With Chief Squirrel, who had been close by in most of this, I now
walked back to my tent. He told me of many sick folk and sad lodges
that needed me.
It seems that very few of these people are well. In spite of their
healthy forest lives they are far less sound than an average white
community. They have their own troubles, with the white man's maladies
thrown in. I saw numberless other cases of dreadful, hopeless,
devastating diseases, mostly of the white man's importation. It is
heart-rending to see so much human misery and be able to do nothing
at all for it, not even bring a gleam of hope. It made me feel like
a murderer to tell one after another, who came to me covered with
cankerous bone-eating sores, "I can do nothing"; and I was deeply
touched by the simple statement of the Chief Pierre Squirrel, after
a round of visits: "You see how unhappy we are, how miserable and
sick. When I made this treaty with your government, I stipulated
that we should have here a policeman and a doctor; instead of that
you have sent nothing but missionaries."
CHAPTER XIV
RABBITS AND LYNXES IN THE NORTH-WEST
There are no Rabbits in the north-west. This statement, far from
final, is practically true to-day, but I saw plenty of Lynxes, and
one cannot write of ducks without mentioning water.
All wild animals fluctuate greatly in their population, none
more so than the Snowshoe or white-rabbit of the north-west. This
is Rabbit history as far back as known: They are spread over some
great area; conditions are favourable; some unknown influence endows
the females with unusual fecundity; they bear not one, but two or
three broods in a season, and these number not 2 or 3, but 8 or 10
each brood.
